UTi Worldwide Inc.

UTi Worldwide Inc. is an international, non-asset-based supply chain services and solutions company providing air and ocean freight forwarding, contract logistics, customs brokerage, distribution, inbound logistics, truckload brokerage, and other supply chain management services. The company serves a large and diverse base of global and local companies, including clients operating in industries with unique supply chain requirements such as the pharmaceutical, retail, apparel, chemical, automotive, and technology industries.

PROBLEM

With operations in more than 70 countries worldwide, UTi is a complex organization primarily focused on ‘freight forwarding’ – shipping customer freight across oceans and continents. Technological innovations have a huge impact on this type of organization and UTi is currently undergoing a massive business transformation they call “1View.” This initiative includes the creation of a new freight forwarding system which will be applied globally to manage about two-thirds of the company’s business.

The operational reporting component of 1View sits with UTi’s Data Architecture and Reporting Group, a global team spread across three countries (U.S., India, and South Africa) who manage all aspects of UTi’s data architecture, business intelligence, data warehousing, and reporting. As part of the transformation, UTi is replacing their legacy financial systems with Oracle Financials R12.

A major piece of this project was to roll-out Oracle Financials to UTi’s different business entities in different countries in parallel with building a financial data warehouse. When it came to reporting from Oracle Financials, the Reporting Group realized it faced challenges delivering reports to both finance users, as well as those who did not have access to Oracle Financials. Another unique security requirement involved matching a combination of entities, locations, lines of business, and HR functions to individual employees so they could view reports specific to their job function.

SOLUTION

Looking for a solution that could provide them a jumpstart, UTi considered Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, but found the applications would not work with their existing Cognos reporting tool.

“In terms of reporting, Noetix comes with prebuilt reports that business users can actually start leveraging,” said Avinash Gupta, senior manager for the Data Architecture and Reporting Group. “We chose Noetix because it gave users an accelerated framework from which to create their own reports.”

UTi purchased NoetixViews for Oracle Financials, Purchasing, Global Extension, and Noetix Generator for Cognos BI. The production environment was up and running in a few weeks, followed by the training of IT and key super users.

UTi initially developed a handful of critical financial reports that they made available to the financial group. Currently, the global IT team’s goal is to provide support for 20 super users that would, in turn, support hundreds of end users for reporting needs, and will eventually grow into support other departments that would include tens of thousands of employees.

“We are still going through our transformation and still defining some reports,” said Gupta. “Noetix is a great reporting solution for anyone using Oracle Financials. And we have the data warehouse to meet reporting requirements where we need to integrate financial data with our operations center.”

RESULT

With NoetixViews and Cognos, the IT team is building and deploying important common reports, and the Finance group can also build their own reports for specific requirements.

“The biggest benefit was the speed of implementation – we got Noetix up and running very quickly,” said Gupta. “And Noetix is very, very beneficial for our users because not every business user can understand the metadata within Oracle Financials. Having the Noetix Search tool helps a lot.”

“The biggest benefit was the speed of implementation – we got Noetix up and running very quickly.”

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Chris Ney

Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer

As Chairman and CEO, Chris leads Magnitude Software’s corporate vision and strategic direction, driving the company’s acquisition, integration and growth strategies to extend the company’s global reach. Under his leadership, Magnitude Software has developed an unparalleled customer experience, strengthened its culture of innovation, and greatly increased profitability and shareholder value. In September 2014, Chris successfully secured up to $100 million in capital to further build Magnitude Software through product innovation, organic growth and strategic acquisitions.

Ney was previously Co-Founder and President of Silverback Enterprise Group, where the team completed the strategic acquisition of nine industry-leading enterprise software companies and leveraged their synergies to build two powerful new entities: Magnitude Software and Upland Software. Magnitude Software offers a family of award-winning solutions for enterprise performance management, master data management and data connectivity. Upland Software (Nasdaq: UPLD) went public in late 2014 and is a leading provider of cloud-based enterprise work management software with over 2,000 active enterprise customers and more than 235,000 active users in more than 50 countries.

Prior to co-founding Silverback, Ney was CEO of a series of Trilogy/Versata portfolio software companies. He previously served as Chairman of the Board, CEO and Founder of CoreTrac, a financial services CRM software company. Ney began his career working for investment banking firms Lehman Brothers and UBS.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Texas A&M University.

Kevin Mischnick

Senior Vice President,
Finance and Accounting

Kevin oversees global financial operations for Magnitude Software.

Bringing more than 25 years of financial experience to Magnitude Software, Kevin is responsible for a number of areas of the business, including Finance, Accounting, Legal and Information Technology.

Kevin’s background includes building and transforming financial teams into high-performing units, implementing systems and processes focused on cost savings and efficiency, and raising nearly $100 million in investor capital. He served as Senior Vice President of Finance for Multimedia Games Inc. and Capstar Broadcasting Corporation. Under his financial leadership, the market values of both companies increased more than tenfold.

Kevin is a certified public accountant and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from Texas Tech University.

Bill Stephens

General Manager, Magnitude Applications

A seasoned IT and consulting executive with a 20-year track record leading teams to drive customer success across diverse industries, Bill previously served as BIAS’ Vice President of Services overseeing the successful delivery of solutions across the Public Sector and Commercial markets. Prior to BIAS, Bill served for over a decade at Oracle Corporation as an applications consultant, project manager, senior operations director, and consulting executive.

He developed the foundation of his leadership skills while serving as a Cavalry Scout in the Kentucky Army National Guard.

Bill holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Louisville.

Tony Fisher

General Manager, Magnitude Integration

Tony leads the Magnitude Integration business, driving strategy, revenue, product and operations as well as leveraging and integrating our Simba- and Innowera- based technologies for new Magnitude solutions.

An accomplished data management and big data marketplace leader, Tony previously served as the SVP, Business Development & Strategy at Zaloni, an award-winning enterprise data lakes management provider; prior to that role, he was Vice President, Data Collaboration & Integration at Progress Software, where he led the business line’s strategic direction and operations.

Prior to Progress, Tony was the CEO of Dataflux Corporation. He also served as Director of data warehouse technology at SAS. A key technology leader at SAS, Tony provided the engineering research and development direction that helped make SAS the market leader in data warehouse software sales.

Tony earned a Degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Duke University.

Darren Peirce

Chief Technology Officer

As Magnitude’s technology guru and evangelist, Darren is critical to building on our position as a leading provider of software and services that help organizations tackle the challenges and opportunities inherent in digital information management.

Previously, Darren served as CTO and Group Vice President of Product Management at Kalido; prior to that role, he was the Lead Solutions Architect and Manager of Professional Services in the United Kingdom. He also worked in senior consulting positions for companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and British Telecom.

Darren received a degree in Management from Intec College in Cape Town, ,South Africa, and studied Economics at the University of Stellenbosch.

Mihir Shah

Executive Vice President,
Corporate Development and Strategy

Mihir is responsible for Magnitude Software’s acquisition and organic strategy.

Mihir has over a decade of experience leading acquisitions and strategy. During this period, he led several public and private company acquisitions, divestitures, and minority and majority equity investments.

Previously, Mihir was M&A Executive for IBM’s Information Management Software division, executing IBM’s inorganic strategy through M&A and strategic partnerships. He also served as Operating Executive for private equity firm, Golden Gate Capital, and as Vice President for Corporate Development at Aspect Software.

Mihir holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Master of Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Karen McPhillips

Vice President,
Marketing

Leveraging 20+ years of transformational marketing experience, Karen fuels Magnitude’s corporate and existing portfolio marketing, collaborating to maximize the company’s business strategy while also supporting integration of acquired products and services.

Karen has served on leadership teams of public and private companies of all sizes, transforming marketing functions and generating both tangible and intangible value. Most recently at PlumChoice, she and her team repositioned the brand and metamorphosed the marketing function in support of the company’s pivot from IT support provider to leader in the cloud services and Internet of Things spaces. At Iron Mountain and its technology arm, Iron Mountain Digital, she created new marketing functions, introduced the marketing operations discipline, and spearheaded a closed-loop leads-to-revenue framework coupled with a brand-to-demand communication platform that raised the bar on marketing’s revenue influence. Prior to Iron Mountain, Karen held marketing leadership roles with SaaS back-up leader, Connected Corporation (acquired by Iron Mountain), and SilverStream Software, contributing to the company’s IPO and acquisition by Novell.

Karen earned a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from St. Michael’s College in Vermont.